Two arrested in India over murder of Irish Latvian Liga Skromane (33)

Police suspect the two men had posed at tourist guides

Liga Skromane, who was living in Swords, Co Dublin, with her partner Andrew Jordan, went missing in India last month. Photographs: Andrew Jordan

Two men have been arrested in India in connection with the murder and rape of Liga Skromane, a Latvian woman who had been resident in Ireland.

The body of Ms Skromane was found in a forest in Kerala, southern India, on April 21st. Local police initially said she had taken her own life.

However, a postmortem revealed she had been murdered after being drugged. Police are working on the theory she was drugged and taken to the forest to be sexually assaulted.

They suspect the two men now being detained had posed as tourist guides.

The police have also said in a statement they believe Ms Skromane was strangled. Her body was then staged to make it look like she had taken her own life.

Her Irish partner Andrew Jordan (44), Swords, north Co Dublin, travelled to India with Ms Skromane’s sister in the five-week period between her disappearance and the discovery of her remains.

Mr Jordan strongly rejected the assumption of suicide as cause of death and called for a thorough investigation.

Ms Skromane (33), who was originally from Latvia but resident in Ireland for five years, went missing on March 14th from Thiruvananthapuram, Kerala’s capital city.

She had gone to Kerala on February 3rd with her sister Ilze and last seen taking a rickshaw to nearby Kovolam beach.

It was hoped that a six-week long medical treatment programme using the ayurveda system, a holistic Indian approach involving herbs and seeds, meditation and yoga, might help Liga who had suffered a mental breakdown last August.

After she went missing on March 14th, Mr Jordan, who is head grower at Sonairte, the National Ecology Centre in Laytown, Co Meath, travelled to India on March 17th. He urged the local police to investigate her disappearance.